This invention relates to an apparatus suitable for oral suctioning and/or anaesthesia/analgesia gas scavenging particularly in a dental clinic.
Commonly in oral surgery, analgesic gas, such as nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, is used for inducing a state of sedation in a patient. This gas together with a volatile anaesthetic agent such as Ethrane, Forane, Halonthane or Penthrane is administered through a nose mask and it is inhaled by the patient until unconsciousness occurs. In order to maintain a toxic tree environment of the operating room, the expired gases exhaled by the patient must not be allowed to contaminate the air in the room. The vapours from the volatile agents are highly toxic and they can normally produce air pollution levels in an operating room in the range of 1500 to 2000 parts per million (PPM) in a matter of seconds. Such levels are considerably in excess of the maximum acceptable levels set in the standard by the Canadian Standards Association, which for waste anaesthetic gases in an operating environment are 25 to 30 PPM cf nitrous oxide and 0.25 to 0.50 PPM of any of the volatile agents.
A scavenging system coupled to the anaesthetic mask can be employed to remove the waste gases exhaled by the patient in order to maintain the cleanliness of the air in the operating room. Such system usually incorporates an expiratory or non-rebreathing valve located at the mask. During operation sometimes it may become necessary for the anaesthetist to have access to the expiratory valve quickly for manual adjustment of the valve due to the changing of breathing conditions of the patient under sedation. Current scavenging systems do not allow such access to the expiratory valve.